Posts tagged Museum of Contemporary Art
Workers at more Chicago cultural venues are unionizing, even during a precarious moment for museums
December 12, 2025 // Still, the process of unionization may not be smooth at every site. At Chicago Botanic Garden, there’s a disagreement between workers and management with what steps should be required to establish a union. Employees who are advocating for better pay, health care and safety on the job and are represented by CMRJB Workers United say they are asking employees to sign union cards. However, Chicago Botanic Garden leadership opposes that approach in favor of a secret ballot election to vote on the union. “To skip that step would really be disenfranchising those eligible employees,” Chicago Botanic Garden President and CEO Jean Franczyk told the Chicago Sun-Times. “The process has multiple steps and options that you can pursue. But the one that we think protects individual eligible workers’ rights is that supervised election.”
LACMA Employees Push to Unionize, Calling for ‘Fairer Compensation’ and ‘Expanded Benefits’
October 30, 2025 // The AFSCME Cultural Workers United District Council 36 has aided in the unionization efforts at other LA museums, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and Foundation, and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and La Brea Tar Pits. The larger AFSCME Cultural Workers United represents employees at museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Frost Art Museum in Miami, the Brooklyn Museum, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Los Angeles museum workers pushing to unionize
March 27, 2025 // Workers at Los Angeles County's Natural History Museum and La Brea Tar Pits Tuesday announced efforts to unionize, citing what they call a need for better wages, safer working conditions and increased diversity. The Natural History Museum & Tar Pits Workers Union would represent almost 300 workers and include performers, engineers, educators, guest relations associates and more, according to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 36.
State of the unions: why US museum workers are mobilising against their employers
February 4, 2022 // TA report by the American Alliance of Museums, published in April 2021, found that museums closed to the public for an average of 28 weeks during 2020. More than 75% of those surveyed stated that their income fell by an average of 40% that year, while 56% went through rounds of layoffs and furloughs. Rehiring, in most cases, is off the table. Those who kept their positions have had to pick up the slack.